Conquest – Impressions of a 1st time Carnival cruiser

[Stevesan]

The following represent impressions and observations, sans IMHO .

 

The Good:

The ship is in excellent condition, spit and polish from bow to stern. Décor was attractive. The signature Impressionist theme carried throughout the ship.

 

The swimming pools (salt water) have large, hot, Jacuzzis. Aft pool adults only.

 

Excellent musical review company. Talent (both voice and dancing), choreography, production qualities, and originality far and away the best I’ve seen. Surprisingly, the Toulouse Lautrec theatre always had plenty of empty seats.

 

Afternoon Tea. Very good variety of offerings. Scones quite good, but no strawberry jam.

 

Lido Buffet large with a variety of choices and lines, easily accommodated a full ship. “The Grill” offers a good variety of deli sandwiches with prompt service.

 

Service, both dining and cabin, are first rate. Food in MDR served promptly and hot. Perfect cabin stewards: out when I was in and in, and in when I was out.

 

The bad:

 

Galveston embarkation, at 11:00AM, was a mass of humanity. Lines 1 ½ hours long.

Disembarkation worse. Halls and stairways jam packed for “Self Assist”. Again, 1 ½ hours in lines to exit ship for second group called.

 

Machines: coffee, juice, ice, etc, in Lido Buffet are not serviced often enough. The flip side is there are a lot of machines.

 

The ship is difficult to navigate. There are frequent dead ends with no posted directions. Very frustrating.

 

The swimming pools are too small. Only 3’8” deep, and just six or seven strokes from end to end.

 

Overall rating a 9 out of 10!

[SheriNtexas]

Great review!! I've been on Conquest twice, with the 3rd time coming up in a month...i LOVE this ship, but disembarking is always a nightmare! I don't do self assist anymore...too many people trying to do it, sometimes with too much stuff....also, it would help if people would wait for their numbers to be called, instead of trying to cheat and go earlier....:rolleyes:

[firefly333]

All the pools on Carnival are tiny, its just how Carnival builds their ships. RCL pools are larger, huge in comparison and their hot tubs are twice as big and lots more.

 

If you are a pool person, Carnival doesnt cater to you imo.

 

Hope your cruise was good.

 

I think if people would come here and read that the only two decks that dont go thru are decks 3 and 4 before they go ... they wouldnt come back saying about all the dead ends and how hard it was to get around. A little work beforehand? Maybe Im just more of a map person and figure directions out faster, but I never had trouble.

[JRock59]

Stevesan - if you were on the Cruise that returned yesterday I'm not surprised getting off was a mess. For some unknown reason when a Ship is late returning it just trows everything off. :( And I agree self assist now is just one big mess. So glad we're Platinum and are assigned a place to meet, not that that hasn't had a few "issues" also. Glad to hear that overall you had a good Cruise! :)

[Meyer2]

Thanks for sharing a summary review! Hope your cruise was great! Can't wait for our turn!

[DebJ14]

Steve,

You just need to cruise more so you get priority embarkation and debarkation. We zipped through security and into the VIP lounge. We were checked in within 5 minutes of arriving at the pier. When it came time to get off we were lucky - they took the Platinum guests who left luggage outside the cabins off midway through the self-assist. We had the easiest get off ever. Got a porter and he took us through a really short immigration line. When we got to the EZcruise pick up spot there was an empty van waiting. They took us and one other family to the lot. We were in the house in Sugar Land by 11am. About the same time we get home when the ship docks on time.

FYI - we have a friend who works at check in on the pier. I saw her on the way to immigration. She said that the original word from the ship was that it would be midnight before we arrived. Good thing they fixed it. We also heard that they were having parts delivered from Houston and they were going to hold up departure for a few hours to get the thing fixed for good. Looks like it left after 6:30pm yesterday.

 

As for your impressions - you enjoyed it more than we did. I would only give it a 5 out of 10 As Platinum guests with 22 cruises (4 previous on the Conquest) we were disappointed by many things. First of all the 300 kids who should have been in school. A whole lot of them were not enrolled in Camp Carnival and were running loose. Also, I was thoroughly disgusted by the people who disregarded the signs and took babies in diapers into the main pool and hot tubs. Security did not do its job. On previous cruises they sent them packing to the baby pool. Also, they did not do anything about the people who put stuff on the chairs and then did not come back for hours to use them. I was only able to get a loungechair at the adult pool on the day we were in Grand Cayman. We did not go ashore in Grand Cayman so we had the pool to ourselves. Every other morning every seat was taken by 9am.

Also, menu main dish choices were not as good as usual. We did enjoy the Point steakhouse.

I called room service twice trying to get something mid-afternoon on the sea days. One day I was told it was an hour wait and the second time I was told it was a 2 hour wait. I was told that it was staff cutbacks by a waiter we have had several times before. Also, at dinner our waiter was run ragged with 30 people to serve.

We always put out the make up room sign before leaving, but it was rarely done when we came back after about an hour and a half. The room steward and assistant had 27 cabins and usually started at the other end.

We booked a suite and unfortunately the people in the suite next to us were loud, obnoxious drunks and never went in and out without slamming the doors. Also, they were smoking cigars on the balcony and the smoke made our balcony unusable.

The biggest problems on this cruise were the other rude passengers and the cutbacks due to staff reductions. Royal Caribbean in January!